Through the K-hole

As its street price plummets, ketamine — the 'horse tranquiliser' party drug — could become this generation's ecstasy

When Holly, 18, and her sixth-form friends were mainly doing coke, they would spend ages getting ready for a night out. "But now I'll just wear a tracksuit or something, whatever's most comfortable," she says. Now that Holly is into ketamine, cocktail bars and show-off nightclubs have been swapped for house parties where, frankly, nobody really cares what you look like. Mainly because when you are on K, you are out of your head, on another planet.

A press release issued by the charity DrugScope earlier this month sparked a rash of newspaper articles declaring that ketamine could overtake cocaine among British recreational drug users. That may be some way off, but it does not take too much digging to confirm the drug's increasing popularity - within certain pockets of society at least. According to one girl on the scene: "Everybody in Camden is doing it . By Sunday afternoons, the whole